The Wichita Eagle: With the memory of campus shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois still fresh, Wichita State University has established an emergency alert system for students, faculty and staff.

The system will allow the university to notify registered users via e-mail and text message of critical events such as tornado warnings, chemical spills or a shooting on campus.

"Virginia Tech is to higher education what 9/11 is to the general population," said Robert Jones, director of marketing for Rave Wireless, the company providing the service for WSU.

A man fatally shot 32 people in a dorm and a classroom at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., on April 16, 2007, before killing himself.

On Feb. 14, a student at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Ill., shot five students to death in a lecture hall before killing himself.

WSU joins more than 60 colleges and universities around the country that have an alert system from Rave. The University of Kansas is among Rave's clients, Jones said, and Emporia State soon will be.

Other universities around the country use different alert-system providers, Jones said.

Students can sign up for the system either on the WSU Web site or when they enroll, said Ravi Pendse, associate provost and chief information officer for the university. Faculty and staff were notified earlier this week.

"Obviously, we take the safety of our constituents very, very seriously," Pendse said. "After Virginia Tech and other places, we needed to make sure a robust system was in place to communicate any kind of emergency or critical situation."

An alert system is particularly important for commuter schools such as Wichita State, Jones said, because the student body "is so mobile."

In meetings with student groups, Pendse said, he stressed that the alert system would be used only for emergencies -- not for sales at the bookstore or other promotions.

"Not even for a snow day," Pendse said.

There will be no fee for being part of the system, he said, though someone may be billed for the text message depending on their service plan.